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I've finally moved from planning to building and I'm going to start my thread here in hopes that some of the members here can help me fix any mistakes before I get to them and help me make a better games & HT room overall.

Little background house was started in May 2006. It will be a 2 level with a finished basement - total square footage around 3200. I will be putting in a HT on each level of the home.

The primary been in the basement as my preliminary plans below.

The plans have changed a bit since that diagram above. I've bought some SMX fabric from Sandman here on the AVS forums and I'm hoping to do a 150" to 165" 16:9 format screen.

In the diagram above each square = sq ft. in reality. - Speaker placements are just proposed I'm not 100% sure on locations yet.

Additional Equipment to be used in the main floor HT.
Sherwood Newcastle R-771
X-box 360
Xpress Vu HD Sat.

The SN R-771 and Satellite receiver will be downstairs in the A/V room feed to the display via the conduit and controlled by the I/R transmitter.

The X-box 360 I don't think will work like this sadly so I'll have to have it somewhere in the room and still have to work out a nice way to hide the wires and the unit out of site
(suggestions are welcome please ?!)

We are going for a clean look over sound quality and that is why we are using In-wall and In-ceiling speakers on the main and basement level.

There will be additional supports put in above the fireplace as well for the articulating monitor support.

Here is a recent shot of the basement and future home to my Main HT & Games room.

This photo is from July 15-06 and shows the furnace hung and been used to dry out the basement as well as my radiant flooring been hydro tested for the main and upper floors.
The basement will be likely getting poured in the 1st two weeks of August once they get the radiant tubing installed in the basement after it's dried and the civil work is done.

Here is a photo of the 200 amp breaker box and electrical panel located in the future mechanical room.

These are the PC stations that will be going into the back of the HT and games room as outlined in the 1st post.

PC Station #1

PC Station # 2

I will likely buy the same desk for PC station #1 as I'm using for #2 as my room will be large enough to use both - in my current set up I don't have the room for the 2 identical desks.

The Multi- function you see in the 2nd photo will be centered between the 2 PC stations and networked in for the whole house.

I will also have a 3rd HTPC in my A/V room for use with the PJ and large screen in the basement HT.

I will be using a GE Carma distribution panel which I'll have located in the Mechanical room to control the outputs through out the home. With the distribution panel I will be able to quickly change a plug in any room of the house to what ever type of outlet I want in that location be it phone, TV, internet or whatever else I have coming into the home.

This is not the exact model but similar and will give you an idea of the panel I've discussed.

I've got a similar-sized panel in my house. I'll take a picture of it tonight and post it on the site in my sig. Let me say that they fill up pretty quickly. I'd go with a bigger one-- at least twice the size.

The PJ I've just recently purchased through AVS and I'm quite pleased with it. Jason at AVS as well as the thread in the $3500 and up forum has all the information you would likely need on this unit.
Here is a quote from Alans original post on this unit
Kodak 333 3 chip DLP.

Quote:

This projector is the Screenplay 333. These are not stock 777s. They are brighter with special features added for use in e cinema pre shows. Kodak has measured the average ANSI lumens at 3100 and contrast at 3200:1 from their inventory. The spec sheet is attached and the projector ships with Kodaks color science added for film look.

Here are a few photos of the unit by my old Panasonic 900 which I will be selling as it is no longer required. I traded up to the 333 so that I would be able to go to a larger screen in the basement HT - I'm hoping to do a 140" to 165" 16:9 and this PJ will have no issues doing those sizes.

-Click on thumbs for larger photos-

Here are the 900 and 333 set up quickly in my basement to do a quick comparison and to ensure everything was working ok.

In the picture above the 900 is about 3 feet closer then the 333. The 333 is a huge PJ here is a shot of myself pulling it out of the box - I'm 5'10" 180 lbs for comparisons sake:

Here is a shot of it out of the box on the couch with a standard DVD/ Games case on it.

Here are a couple of comparison shots of the 900 and the 333 using component cables on the xbox 360

the 900

the 333

Here a couple of shots of the 333 showing black levels and a few screens from a DVD at 480P. Any blurring in the images is myself or the camera not the PJ fault.

These shots are on a 110" diagonal image on the da-lite 1.5 gain pull down screen I'm using at the moment to test equipment.

I've got a similar-sized panel in my house. I'll take a picture of it tonight and post it on the site in my sig. Let me say that they fill up pretty quickly. I'd go with a bigger one-- at least twice the size.

Thanks GreySkies the Carma I'm actually going with luckily is about 2x larger it was the biggest one my A/V installer sells and I wanted it large enough to grow with my A/V future needs so hopefully it can handle it.

I unfortunately can't seem to locate anything on the GE Carma panel they are selling me online anyone know where I can link or find a picture of the GE line?

Cheers

PS. GreySkies I like the look of your bar - always partial to wood in that hue looks great!

My primary budget and time is been spent on the bottom HT & games room so the majority of my thread will centered on it vs the upstairs HT and main level HT which I've glossed over above.

Most of the audio equipment I've purchased from a great fellow I've met here on AVS. His name is Kevin and he goes by Soundood here on the forum. Great guy, very knowledgable and been good to me as far as pricing and going out of way to provide me excellent service - He drove an hour or two out of his way to drop items off at my friends house which is above and beyond IMO.

Anyways I'm sure he won't mind so I'll post the layout of my Audio set up he did up for me which outlines the components he sold to me as well.

here is the gear stored in the basement

Here are a couple of photos of the inwall thors (taken from Kevin's site)

Back of Sub

Front of Sub

My sub placement is not finalized but you can see where I'm thinking of putting them in the 1st post diagram.

Thanks. It's still a work in progress. Cabinets, under counter and lighting go in this weekend. I had picked out that color for the stairs, but my wife (artist) talked me into it for the bar as well.

That enclosure looks to be something from the GE Security Line. The mounting holes look to be the standard Leviton, ChannelPlus, OpenHouse, WiredHome mounting size. I can't see GE using a proprietary size-- they're not Sony.

Thanks. It's still a work in progress. Cabinets, under counter and lighting go in this weekend. I had picked out that color for the stairs, but my wife (artist) talked me into it for the bar as well.

That enclosure looks to be something from the GE Security Line. The mounting holes look to be the standard Leviton, ChannelPlus, OpenHouse, WiredHome mounting size. I can't see GE using a proprietary size-- they're not Sony.

Thanks for the link it lead me to thishttp://www.wensmann.com/scc/main.htm...smann.com/scc/
which is does a great job of explaining the panel in detail.
The 37" panel is the one I've selected I'll have to take a photo of it next time I'm in the A/V installers show room as I won't likely see it in the home for a few months yet.

AV room off the side of the screen wall is around 5' wide x 5' long - I've had them do drywall shelves spaced 18" apart from the ground to the 9' ceiling.
I may at a later date remove the drywall and install a rack system but for now I'm going to see how the drywall shelving works out.

I've been tinkering around on the Internet as I'm not overly busy at work and its Sunday and I was reading more about light and screens as they pertain to HT.

I've been a pretty avid A/V fan and into HT for awhile but I never really took a hard look at Lumen's until today.
I've had a few PJ and I know what they are and the difference more or less but I don't know for example how many Lumen's my 900 is putting out a 1.5 gain screen when it has 600 hours on the bulb.

So now I'm curious and I'm going to find out - This is what I've found out so far:

Quote:

the method for getting lumen's. . . . Take a reading at the screen towards the bulb in Lux and divide by 10.79 * screen gain.
This gets you FtL. Then multiply FtL by the Square Feet of the screen size and you have lumens.

Quote:

Anything much below 300 lumen's will probably be too dim for most screens. SMPTE recommends 12 FtL as a target brightness

lux * screen area in meters = lumen's

So armed with this information I just need something to find out what brightness or lux is.

Did some more digging and I found out the favored instrument for this type of thing for HT enthusiast is this little beast

It is a AEMC CA813 light meter and I've ordered one today so I can do some measurements at home and once I get into the new house with the new set up.
The main properties or functions of this meter are:
Removable sensor for remote reading
Measures in foot-candles (fc) or lux
CIE photo optic response (human eye

I'm particularly interested in how my 333 will measure up once its calibrated (since I've seen reported calibrated numbers on the AVS website ) hopefully I'm not disappointed.

When it arrives in a few weeks I'll post some of my tests for those that may be interested.

I've been watching this hoping for some comments on the in-wall subs as well. I had been thinking of doing in walls, as my other speakers are in-walls, but ultimately decided against it mostly because of placement/tweaking. I built stiff frames that are connected to the wall framing for my in walls, and I was concerned about how stiff I'd have to make frames for in wall subs, and about structure loosening just enough to cause rattles, which would drive me nuts.

I guess ultimately I can put them where they are located on my drawing and just use sound treatments and the Behringer feed back destroyers to deal with "tweaking" (which is what I bought them for to begin with). I've asked a few people and so far no one has looked at what I've suggested and said move them so I'll assume they'll work.
I really hope they perform as I hope or I'll be getting another wall drywalled and painted again in the near future
Thanks for the input.

PS I checked your site the other day and I saw some updated photos but not the distribution panel you were going to post? Are those photos still going to get posted up?

Yep, I still have to post that. I had planned on getting my cabinets and everything under the bar done this weekend, but we ended up furniture shopping for the room seating all weekend and all I was able to get done was the under bar lighting. I'm leaving the office early today (a car is picking me up at 3am tomorrow morning to take me to the airport, so I don't feel guilty about leaving early), so it'll be posted in a couple of hours (I hope).

Thanks for posting the photo. Holy Crap ! you have alot of cables in that panel - the 8 port switch really fills the cabinet. I will likely be going with a 8 port switch as well if I don't end up going with a few wireless routers (was thinking one on each floor of the home to cover the entire house). I haven't made up my mind yet and I'm leaning towards the hard wire as I've always had problems with wireless in the past.

I'll be doing my next walk through on the 12th and should have some new photos up shortly there after.

Yep-- like I said, that smaller box fills fast! When we built the house (2001), I thought it'd be tons of space.

Hard wire is definitely the way to go-- completely plug-and-play-- and the microwave can't interfere. I also have a wireless access point in the basement that covers the entire house (ap. 3200 sq. ft.) and the patio, so I can take a laptop places where I don't have a port (like the patio). It's funny-- from my house, I can see seven different wireless networks-- and several of them are wide open.

I hear you on the wireless stuff. I'm not to keen to use it myself as I do a lot of online gaming and it drops and lags at lot more with wireless then hardwired in my experience.
I may go with a wireless access point for just surfing etc at some point if I buy another laptop in the future ( I recently sold my Dell XPS when the new company wouldn't allow me to use my own laptop).
I too have several neighbors that are broadcasting free internet for anyone that cares to access them - still amazes me how many people don't do any protection for their wireless set ups.

I'm only a a few days away from my next walk through and I thought I'd post up my "old" problem I haven't really dealt with and see what people have to say in regards as to how to fix it.

Here is a photo of my screen as it arrived back in May - Fed Ex smashed the hell out of it sadly. It is just fabric as I'm making my own frame and I'm trying to salvage it with out sending it back to Sandman to see if he can get it replaced.

After it arrived and I finished cursing (about an hour) I took it out of the bag and wrapped it up as tightly as I could on a PVC pipe, put it back in the bag and left it in one of the warmest rooms in my house.

I've since checked on it a couple of times and sadly it hasn't improved much. I've rolled it back up and left it in the room until I can come up with a better way to correct all the wrinkles and creases caused by the evil Fed Ex.

My current plan is to build a frame and stretch out the fabric on the frame while using a steamer to try and get the wrinkles out. I'm not sure when I'm going to do this but likely after I'm in the new home as I don't have enough room in my basement with out removing 1/2 stuff in it.

On another forum they've suggested the steaming and tensioning of the screen on a frame will work - I sure hope so.

Bought my AVS gold club membership today - figured I'd give a something back to this great forum - I've been coming here and learning for years long before finally signing up in June of 2005. I've recently bought a PJ from Jason at AVS and figured I would show my continuing support to this awesome resource.

Blanks screens on 333 (don't know how to do this on the 900 to compare as they don't have it in the menu and I don't have a DVD or PC hooked up to it to duplicate same screens as in the 333 menu)

Black screen = 0 lux
Blue screen = 24 lux
White Screen = 666 lux

These machines are not calibrated or ISF certified but these are the numbers untweaked out of the box so to speak. The Panasonic also has almost 600 hours on the bulb so it's lumens have dropped off (lamp measurements above all have been done in high mode)

The meter is an AEMC CA813 meter measurments are in lux.

I measured the light output at the screen, facing toward the projector lens.